Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Bits/Bytes

I talk about megabytes and gigabytes practically every day due to my music collection, frequent downloading, and lack of storage space, but I was unsure of what these words truly meant. I checked out the Indiana University Technology base which best explained the relationship between bits-bytes-kilobytes-megabytes-gigabytes. They even go all the way up to a "yottabyte" which is a word I have never heard of before.


A bit is the smallest unit - it can only be a 1 or a 0.

A byte is composed of typically 8 bits which combine to form something simple like a letter (i.e. Z).

I have never understood why computer storage is not saved by a system of 10s, but IU states that computers use "binary math." Thus, a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes instead of 1,000.

The largest denomination of space I have ever used is a terrabyte (TB) which is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.


IU has a table of the equivalencies of each of these different sizes which I found very helpful. It is:

Unit Equivalent
1 kilobyte (KB) 1,024 bytes
1 megabyte (MB) 1,048,576 bytes
1 gigabyte (GB) 1,073,741,824 bytes
1 terabyte (TB) 1,099,511,627,776 bytes
1 petabyte (PB) 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes
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3 comments:

  1. NorahSeptember 15, 2009 at 4:24 PM

    Great job with your post. I like how clear the information is as well as the layout you chose to use.

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  2. Gabriel AcostaSeptember 15, 2009 at 4:33 PM

    It's interesting to see how we desire and demand larger and larger storage capacities. We have come a long way from floppy disks that only contained 1.44 MB and from the early computers that could only hold 4.4 MB (early computers such as the "IBM 350 which was part of the IBM RAMAC 305").

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  3. Lance StrateSeptember 22, 2009 at 2:07 PM

    I find it fascinating that we're back to the pirate days of pieces of eight!

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